Private trainer Goldman keen to honour late owner as he ponders his own racing future
Sprinter Irish Songs to carry Cardy’s maroon and white silks down the Flemington straight
Of all the races being run around Australia on Saturday, a Benchmark 84 (1200m) at Flemington is not the first that will spring to mind, not when one of the best runnings of the Black Caviar Lightning Stakes (Gr 1, 1000m) will be staged at headquarters and top colt Anamoe (Street Boss) aims to avenge a first-up defeat when he tackles the Hobartville Stakes (Gr 2, 1400m) in Sydney.
But the $130,000 1400-metre race is an important one for NSW trainer Kurt Goldman, who has talented sprinter Irish Songs (Shamus Award) heading down the Hume Freeway from his Goulburn base to race at Flemington a little more than an hour after Nature Strip (Nicconi), Eduardo (Host), Masked Crusader (Toronado) and company clash in a star-studded renewal of the Lightning.
Irish Songs, a winner of almost $500,000, is owned by Goldman’s long-time supporter, the late Alan Cardy, who tragically died just before Christmas following a fall at his Sydney home.
Cardy, who played nine Tests for the Wallabies in the 1960s, died on December 19. He was 76.
Goldman has been Cardy’s private trainer, preparing about 20 racehorses at any one time for the former Australian rugby player from a property called Lynton, near Goulburn, for the past eight years.
Executors are currently overseeing Cardy’s estate and Goldman has vowed to continue to train the owner’s horses, honouring an agreement made between the pair before he died, which was to maintain the stable for a minimum of six months after his death.
“Alan obviously trusted me for eight years and put a lot of faith in me over that time, so I just want to keep trying to do what he would have wanted and try to do the best with his colours,” Goldman said yesterday.
“They’ve been around for a long time and they’ve been on a lot of good horses, so I want to try and keep that going the best I can until the decision is made (to finally finish up), I guess.”
Irish Songs, whose jockey Brett Prebble will sport Cardy’s colours of maroon, white armbands and cap at Flemington on Saturday, is not up to the level of Hellbent (I Am Invincible), who Goldman prepared in the early stages of his career, nor five-time stakes winner Eckstein (I Am Invincible) who he also trained, but he’s been an admirable advertisement for the trainers ability.
“Irish Songs was very unlucky in the Kosciuszko and probably the Goulburn Cup, in particular. They were two very good runs he put together and he was unlucky not to win one, if not both of them,” Goldman said.
“He’s just a tricky horse because he doesn’t like a spell. He doesn’t enjoy his time out in the paddock. You’ll notice that his races have been spaced a little bit and that is basically his spell, his freshen-up these days.
“He’s come on really well since that trial the other day (at Canberra) and his record at Flemington down the straight is quite good.”
Since Cardy’s death, Goldman has been asked many times what he plans to do when, as expected, the property he trains from is sold.
While uncertain of his answer, he is sure that he doesn’t want to make any rash calls about his future, although he hopes the relationships he has forged in recent years with breeders and owners could help establish himself as a public trainer, be that in NSW or interstate.
“That next decision for me is quite a big one in the sense that I am already 35 and I love racing, I love training and probably where I do set up next is something that I’m going to look at as a lifetime sort of goal and opportunity,” he said.
“I am not looking to do something for the short-term, so for that reason I do want to obviously weigh up some options and explore opportunities regarding facilities, tracks, to make sure that I do really get what I deem to suit me the best both for lifestyle reasons and for the horses as well.
“I don’t want to just rush in and take boxes for the sake of it. Even if it takes me six months or 12 months to get the right set up, then so be it.”
Goldman trained Hellbent during his two- and three-year-old career, winning three of his seven starts, before Yarraman Park Stud bought into the colt and transferred him to Darren Weir.
Hellbent would be retired after winning the 2018 William Reid Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) and Goldman retains a breeding right in the horse.
“I took over a couple of horses that Danny Williams used to train (for Cardy in January 2014) and we managed to win a Canberra Cup and a Group 3 Premier’s Cup in Brisbane with Faust and then came Hellbent who was from the first crop of yearlings which we’d gone out and sourced and Eckstein was from the second,” Goldman said.
“We started up a really strong relationship straight away with good success. That has tapered off a little bit as we haven’t had that headline horse the past couple of years, but we went out and bought six yearlings last year, which are all two-year-olds now, and some of them I am quite happy with.
“Whether I will get them to the races or if they (Cardy’s family) want to sell them, I am not sure. It will be up to them to decide what they do.
“The next six months will be run as normal and then a decision will be made.”
Goldman went to the Inglis Classic sale earlier this month and he was not planning to buy a horse, but when a half-sister to Eckstein, a filly by Vancouver (Medaglia d’Oro), was available he couldn’t say no. He outlaid $50,000 to take her home.
“The reason I bought her was more the sentimental value that she has to me. Obviously Eckstein was the best horse Alan and I shared together outside of Hellbent, but I only had him for the first half of his career,” the trainer said.
“Eckstein was one we had for a long time and we had a lot of fun with her. I had no intention of going to the sales this year and buying horses because, the truth is, I don’t know what the future holds.”
Part of the tragedy of Cardy’s death was that it appeared for the preceding year that he had been enjoying his private racing operation more than he had at any point during Goldman’s tenure.
“For the first time in those eight years that I’d trained for him he was coming up to the stables. He had a house on the farm and he was living there. He’d only been back in Sydney for two days and that (accident) happened, so it was quite sad,” Goldman said.
“We were very close anyway, but having him there at the farm every day, he’d come and watch the horses work in the morning, then we’d go and play golf, go to the pub for lunch and have a steak. We became very close in the last six months, in particular, and I am thankful for it.”
Goldman also has the Cardy-owned Important Product (Choisir), a winner of three of his past five starts, running at Moonee Valley tomorrow night.